1. Technical Field
The present disclosure pertains to networking technology. More particularly, the present disclosure pertains to coordination among neighboring networks for communications over shared physical medium.
2. Description of Related Art
There is generally a growing demand from individual customers and enterprise customers for a high-throughput, cost-effective network that provides reliable services. Service providers, such as telephone companies and cable companies, are frequently upgrading their networks to provide such networks to attempt to provide reliable services over their networks. Typically, network access provided to customer premises by service providers in the case of single-family homes and multi-dwelling units (MDUs) tends to be through means like fiber, DSL or co-axial cable. After providing the network access, service providers still need to ensure the delivery of services at different points inside the customer premises. Some of those points, such as TV and computer for Internet access, usually demand services requiring high data rate. Besides, in a typical household, there are usually multiple ports that need to be supported in the home network. Accordingly, a typical home or apartment units in an MDU may need to share the same physical medium to operate the different network nodes of the home network. In some cases there may be physical isolation between neighboring networks, but in most cases at least a subset of network nodes in any network may suffer from interference from one or more network nodes in one or more neighboring networks.
The standards dealing with wireline network communications specify the behavior of different network nodes of a network established over communication channels such as power line, coaxial cable, phone line and Ethernet. Regardless of the type of physical medium, each network generally has a central coordinator, also known as a domain master (DM). If multiple networks are established over the same physical medium without some kind of coordination amongst the DMs of the multiple networks, interference between these networks may occur and quality of service may suffer as a result.
There is, therefore, a need for a scheme to coordinate among the DMs of neighboring networks to minimize mutual interference between the neighboring networks and to maximize throughput.